Mike Winkelmann, also known as Beeple, a prominent Non-Fungible Token (NFT) developer, got his Twitter account hacked as part of a phishing scheme that looks to have seized more than $70,000 in Ethereum.
Users were warned by MetaMask’s security expert Harry Denley. He tweeted that Beeple’s tweets at the time, which contained a link to a raffle for a Louis Vuitton NFT collaboration, were a phishing scheme that would drain crypto from users’ wallets if clicked.
Denley went on to say that over $50,000 in Ethereum had been taken and that the bad actor was still using Beeple’s Twitter account for another, more “complex” fraud, totaling $72,165.60.
What did those phishing links do?
- The phishing links remained up for about five hours, and an on-chain investigation of one of the scammers’ wallets revealed that the first phishing link netted them 36 Ether (ETH), which was valued at about $73,000 at the time.
- The second connection netted the fraudsters roughly $365,000 in ETH and many NFTs from high-value collections, including the Mutant Ape Yacht Club, VeeFriends, and Otherdeeds, among others, bringing the scam’s total value to around $438,000.
“We have control now,” Beeple later tweeted, adding, “Stay cautious out there, anything too good to be true IS A F*CKING SCAM.”
Why hackers targetted Beeple?
Beeple is responsible for three of the top ten most valuable NFTs ever sold, including one that sold for $69.3 million, the highest price ever paid by a single owner. However, he has been a target for hackers because of his celebrity.
In November 2021, a Beeple Discord admin account was hijacked, with scammers advocating a similar phony NFT drop, resulting in customers losing about 38 ETH.
